


Madonna in Orange

by IoanNemos



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: (shocking I know), Angst, Blood, Depersonalization, Disassociation, Father-Son Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Language, Mild Injuries, Nightmares, POV remains the same but changes from 3rd to 2nd to 1st, boy i hope this story makes sense bc i've read it too many times and can't tell anymore, disordered eating (sort of), in an attempt to convey said disassociation and depersonalization, lots of talking about and flashbacks to a stabbing, lots of talking about nausea and vomiting (dry heaving occurs), rated for/featuring:, takes place between 1.15 and 1.16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23510782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IoanNemos/pseuds/IoanNemos
Summary: The events themselves are mostly coherent. It’s putting them in the right order that’s hard.…Maybe not that coherent.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38





	Madonna in Orange

**Author's Note:**

> I started this during the hiatus between episodes fifteen and sixteen, and finished it during the hiatus after episode eighteen. Coping mechanism? Perhaps.
> 
> I didn't demarcate when the pronouns change (or when he's dreaming, for that matter) for aesthetic reasons.

It’s raining. No, it’s the shower. Too warm for rain. Wet spatter and ragged breathing echo in confined space. He opens your eyes onto grey tile, blinks the water out of your eyes. He's sitting. Water sluices between your fingers. It pelts into your face, your hair, your clothes.

Clothes. Right. Grimy puddles in the alleyway. Grit under your fingernails. Taste of concrete, asphalt.

He doesn’t remember the return journey, though. Losing time? Bad sign. If only you could sleep. Can’t sleep. Catapulted out of REM every time.

He stands, groaning. Your head is pins and needles, and your side pulses. You’re so hungry, you’re nauseous. Can’t eat, either. Everything comes back up. He spits down the drain. It’s pink. Tang of blood. Not much, though. Nothing to be worried about. Bit your tongue, maybe. Nothing serious.

Steps out of the shower, slips, catches nothing, doesn’t fall. The world tips sideways and won’t right. Stays tilted. Did he turn off the water? It gurgles down the drain. He spits again. Less pink. He picks up your things off the counter and goes into the main room.

It’s dark. He drops your things on the bedspread, peels off your wet clothes like an argument: he wants them off, and they stick to your skin. Taking off your ruined shirt hurts. No bruising yet. A little red. Clean, shallow. No embedded grit. He leaves them all in puddles. Your clean clothes stick, too. Skin still wet. Dismisses this, climbs onto the bed. Doesn’t lock you down. Doesn’t mean to sleep. Just wants to close your eyes and rest. Just wants to think of nothing. Turn up the static until it becomes the comforting hiss of white noise. Drown a horrified gasp and a scream in it.

Lawyers in suits. Florals exchanged for hi-vis orange. The resistance as it went in, the initial protection of the skin helpless against steady pressure.

He jerks awake with a scream, mouth filled with blood. No, only the taste. No, there is blood- he bit your tongue again. He gags, rolls off the bed with a closed-mouth groan, staggers into the kitchen, spits into the sink. Bright red. He turns on the tap and washes it away. Spits again and again, sips from the faucet and swishes it, then spits that out. Watered down but still blood. He turns off the tap with a hand that barely obeys. It doesn’t feel like you have fingers. He can’t lean on the counter. Your side hurts too much.

The apartment is briefly filled with light, then vibrates with thunder. He goes over to the window and looks out. Still raining. Droplets chase each other down the glass. He presses a palm against it, then your forehead. It’s cool, not cold, beats back the throbbing at the base of your skull. You need to sleep. He wants to sleep.

A buzzing makes it through the static. He turns to see your phone’s screen lighting up. Text message? From Ainsley. Refers back to a conversation he doesn’t remember. He puts the phone in your pocket. Thunder grumbles. Rain hisses against the windows.

He nearly falls down the stairs. There seem to be ten more than usual.

The rain is cold as it soaks through your t-shirt. He tilts your face into it, feels each drop of water hit like a flicked finger. He starts walking, one foot in front of the other. He can feel every crack in the concrete. Every raindrop is a little bit colder, a little bit more numbing. He can feel every breath inflate your lungs, every painful beat of your heart. Maybe you’re coming back.

You don’t check out like this, usually. You’re better about noticing your triggers, about eating and sleeping and remembering whatever it is that’s buzzing in the back of your head, angry about being forgotten. But today you saw handcuffs, heard them ratchet shut around two slender wrists, and felt something give. Nothing _broke_. Nothing _snapped_. But something gave. Everything since that is… foggy. Some things before it, too.

Sidewalk gives way to street. Street gives way to sidewalk. Deserted in the rain. Lightning flashes and he flinches. Thunder booms and he covers your ears. When he looks up again, the girl is there, standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Horror stops him in his tracks. He blinks, and she blurs, but she doesn’t go. She doesn’t approach, either. She begins to walk away, gesturing for him to follow. He does.

She leads him for what could be hours. Time is a slippery concept. The rain blurs the edges of things, softens all sound. Cars buzz as they pass, their red lights trailing after them. He’s pleasantly numb. He’s aware but unbothered that problems hover nearby, that somewhere in the control bank of your mind a few sensors are flashing furiously at being ignored. Can’t deal with it now. Even the urgency of following the girl is muted. It’s all on the other side of glass. Dreamlike.

Of course. If the girl is here, this is a dream.

Street signs are unreadable, like smudged paint. Traffic lights change in random order. You’re wet to the skin, yet not cold, or maybe cold enough that it doesn’t matter. Lightning stutters. Thunder mumbles. The knife pressed through your father’s skin so easily. Was it easy because it was your father? Or was it easy because you were the one doing the stabbing?

You stumble and catch yourself on a tree, pressing your hand to your side reflexively. A tree? You’re in an unfamiliar park. The girl steps behind a tree and does not appear on the other side. You look down and step around roots gingerly, only now realizing you left your apartment barefoot. In your dream. This is a dream.

Your pocket vibrates. You pull out your phone with a hand that’s all thumbs. It’s from Ainsley. It starts UPDATE: but the rest of the text won’t resolve into words. Because this is a dream. This is a dream. You look up, waiting for the girl to reappear, for yourself, for your father to be standing in the pool of light under a streetlamp. It’s empty. There’s a picnic table under the trees, a few yards from the light. You sit down at it, feeling a shudder crack through you, feeling the fog of unease rise thick and choking, feeling a white flash of unreality turning your surroundings into a painting. This is a dream. This is a dream.

You swallow hard. You unlock your phone, select Gil’s number, raise the phone to your ear in a trembling hand. It rings twice before abruptly clicking, a piercing series of rising tones making you flinch. “ _We’re sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check-_ ” You hang up. Stare at the phone. Try again. Click. Rising tones. “ _We’re sorry. You have reached-_ ”

“Dream,” you say, out loud. “It’s a dream.” Your voice sounds harsh and unhinged. You try to breathe deeply. Your chest feels bound in iron. You try again and cough. “Dream. It’s just a dream.” Rain patters through the leaves, dripping steadily down the back of your neck. A car hums past, splashing up puddles. Your mouth is dry. Panic bites at your ankles. You bring your feet up and half tuck them under yourself. “It’s just a dream,” you say to the thunder growling overhead. “It’s just a dream. It’s just a- Oh, God.”

You call Gil’s phone again. “ _We’re sorry._ ” You stare in numb, shaking terror. What happened? What happened today? You think of knives and how you knew exactly where to put it without even feeling for the ribs, how you knew exactly how much pressure was needed. Steady as a statue. That wasn’t today. That was- yesterday? The day before? Caskets. Dead bodies. That wasn’t today, either.

You think of a floral blouse, of fine wrists in bangles and the clicking of handcuffs. The other kind of bracelet.

Click. Rising tones. “ _We’re sorry_.” What happened to Gil’s phone? Why can’t you remember? You see a flash of long, silky hair. A greyhound straining at a leash. A fake diamond necklace. “ _We’re sorry_.” Your father in red, your mother in orange. Ainsley’s fists beating at your chest, fingers digging into your arms, crying, screaming, pleading, accusing, all of it so distant, like it happened to someone else, like it happened decades ago. Click. Rising tones. “ _We’re sorry_.” A pier. A speedboat. Gil pushed off. Gil going under. Waiting for him to reappear. Your breath catches. There. There it is. You dry heave, then cough, then grip the picnic bench with both hands while you gag, trying to drag oxygen back into your lungs. The world goes black at the edges and doesn’t quite come back even after you sit up, wipe your mouth, pant for cold, humid air. Click. Rising tones. “ _We’re sorry_.”

Click. “’lo?”

Your breath catches again, because- because- Your mind stutters. “Gil?”

“Wha’? No, it’s-” A grunt, then a frustrated sigh followed by a yawn. “Dammit, Bright, it’s Dani. You called me by mistake. Gil’s phone is in the harbor, remember?”

“Oh.” The world jitters between blinks. “Uh. I’m- Must’ve- Where’s Gil?”

A brief pause. “Uh, home? I assume?”

The iron bands loosen a single notch. Her annoyance is more reassuring than reassurance would have been. “Oh, good. Okay. I, uh, I couldn’t remember-” A wave of something hot and dark rises, drowning the world in silence for a minute. When it subsides, Dani is talking but she’s mid-sentence. “Sorry, I’m okay, what were- Could you start over?”

“Bright,” and it’s not annoyance anymore, it’s something else, “where the hell are you right now?”

“Uh, I have no idea. A park. I think. I don’t know. Trees. I think-” You pause. Dani says nothing. You swallow. “I think… something bad is happening.”

“What do you mean?” Urgency now.

“Because I’m- not really sure we’re talking.” You look down at your hand, at the rain sparking off of it in the lamplight. “I think- It feels like we are, but it’s… kind of hard to tell.”

“And you don’t know where you are?”

“No.”

“Okay. Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re gonna hang up- _not yet_ \- and you’re gonna call 911.” There’s a noise on the other end, a strange rustling accompanied by a grunt. “You’re gonna tell them Officer Powell is asking for assistance at your location, okay? And you’re gonna give them my badge number. You know it, right?” A series of numbers floats to the forefront of your churning mind and you repeat them, hoping for the best. “Right. Say what you’re gonna do back to me.”

“Call 911, Officer Powell, badge number, assistance at my location.”

“Right. Are you gonna need an ambulance?”

“I don’t think so,” you say, feeling instinctively at your side.

“Are you _sure?_ ”

It feels like pressing on a bruise. You aren’t sure of anything. Except ambulances mean hospitals, and a hospital now might mean involuntary commitment, so you nod, even though she can’t see you. “Yes.”

“Okay. Then you tell them just to send a squad car. I’m gonna pick up Gil and we’re gonna find out where you are and we’re gonna come get you, okay?”

“Send a squad car, get Gil-” The dark rises again. “He’s okay?”

“He’s fine, I promise.” Another soft grunt. “I’m heading out now. Call 911. Got it?”

“Yeah.” You hang up and stare down at your phone. The screen blurs with rain.

“911. What is your emergency?”

“Officer Powell requests assistance at my location.” You stammer out the badge number, hoping it’s correct. “Just a squad car. No ambulance.” The girl steps out from behind a tree. You think the woman on the phone might say something, but it’s drowned out in hissing whispers, in your rocketing heartbeat-

“Sir?”

It’s raining. It’s cold. You blink water out of my eyes and hold up a trembling hand to shield them from the blinding white flashlight. The light lowers, flickers around the picnic area, returns to you, pinning you against the table. You can feel the wood digging into my back.

“Sir, are you alright?”

A moment’s flash of insight, of perfect revelation. “I didn’t take my meds today,” you say. Or try to say: my voice is hoarse, so you only get halfway through the sentence before coughing.

“Sir?” Footsteps crunch closer. You’re aware of dark uniform, gleaming badge, one hand holding flashlight, other hand loose. Not resting on the holstered gun. “I said, are you alright?”

You nod, head swimming. “I’m- No, but I will be. I just have to go home.”

Home. Marble floors. Chandeliers. Sparkling glass in shining wooden cabinets. Plush carpet ripped out room by room. Fingerprints black with ink. Every knife in its own evidence bag.

Sitting empty. Gathering dust. Assets seized. Including your apartment?

“Sir, I said, have you seen-”

“Lehrer!” More footsteps, another swinging light. “Powell’s not actually here. She wanted assistance for a civvie.” The flashlight sweeps upward, slamming into my face. You flinch back, raising an arm. “I’m guessing for him.”

“You’re shitting me.” The first officer sighs, aggravated. “Hey, did you call in using Officer Powell’s badge?”

It takes you a moment to realize the question was directed at you. “Yes.”

“You’re shitting me.” Another sigh. “Did she radio in or something?”

“Yeah, she’s on her way.” The second officer shifts on his feet. “So… now what?”

“Now? Now we fuckin’ wait. Well, first we- Hey, are you high or something?”

You try not to laugh but can’t help it: the problem is you _aren’t_ on anything. “No.”

“Excellent. Perfect. Okay, well, we get a blanket out of the car and then we fuckin’ babysit, I guess, because when Powell gets here I’m giving her a piece of my mind. Wait here, make sure he doesn’t wander off or some shit.” One set of footsteps crunches away.

One set of footsteps comes back, accompanied by an undertone of annoyance. A foot or two away, the officer shakes out a bright yellow blanket.

Red, orange, yellow.

Once you’re under the blanket, you can’t stop shaking.

Time passes, you suppose.

No blood, with the knife.

I didn’t pull it back out.

You don’t remove knives.

You let the surgeon do that.

“Bright!”

You struggle to breach the surface, to come back up for air. Gil?

“Bright, if you don’t respond to me in thirty seconds, I’m going to call an ambulance.”

Gil. You blink water out of my eyes. A face swims into focus. “Hey.”

A relieved sigh. “Hey, yourself.” There’s a hand on my shoulder. Probably has been for a while. “Kid, what in God’s name-”

“Meds.”

Pause. “What?”

“Meds.” You try to summon more words. “Took them… this morning. Yesterday. Whatever. Threw them back up. I… don’t think I took them tonight. Not… after…” Handcuffs. Floral blouse. You gag, press an arm across my stomach, hiss at the pressure on my side.

“Jesus Christ. Have you kept anything down?”

Shake my head. “Not after Mom…”

“After-? Well, shit. When were you last at your mom’s place?”

“No, after-” The words are a logjam. The right opening in the right place and they’ll all come loose. Right now, they’re lodged in my throat so tightly you can hardly breathe around them. “After-”

“Jesus, Bright, after what?”

They come free with a jerk, a breaking of a tether, a rush of words you never wanted to say. “After her _arrest!_ ” You want to throw up. You can feel the tingling in my jaw. But there’s nothing left.

Gil pulls back. Just a little. “Arrest? What are you- Your mom wasn’t arrested.”

Floral blouse for orange. Silver handcuffs for bracelets. You were there. You saw it.

You _saw_. Didn’t you?

“What?”

“Believe me, kid, if your mom was arrested, I would know about it. Hell, I’m pretty sure I’d be her phone call.”

“But-” Dad. The give of the flesh under the knife. A scream and a horrified gasp and a silence.

Gil gives my shoulder a gentle shake. The world rocks. “Malcolm, I promise you, your mom is at home and she is _fine_. Okay?”

You blink water out of my eyes. Taste salt. “But-”

“Boss, Rebecca Khepra.” Dani is here, suddenly. Or maybe she was here all along. “She’s a rich brunette. We arrested her yesterday, in her fancy house-”

“Oh, my God.” Gil rubs his empty hand over his face. “Kid, do you remember that?”

Long, silky hair. Dark eyes. Haughtily silent through the denouement. Nervous yet proud, like a thoroughbred horse. They took her clothes at the precinct, including her floral blouse, to check them for evidence. They gave her an orange jumpsuit. You looked through the one-way mirror and heard my mother in her clipped voice, her thin veneer of bravado. Saw the bruises peeking through the cuffs of the jumpsuit. Wished psychological scars showed so well in photographs. “Oh.” The world shifts sideways. “Oh…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” and Gil pulls you into a hug. You’re so cold. You’re _so cold_. “It’ll be okay. Let’s get you home, okay? C’mon.” Gil finds my arms through the blanket and tugs gently. You slide my feet out from under myself, feel the wet ground, feel the ripple of surprise. “Jesus Christ, kid. You weren’t wearing shoes?” Gil parts the blanket, letting in a wave of cold air. You shudder and close it, making a small involuntary noise of protest. “And of course you’re soaked. You have any idea how long you’ve been out here?”

“No.”

“C’mon.” Gil wraps an arm across my shoulders and guides you through the trees.

You let yourself be led, let yourself be pushed gently into the back seat. Gil climbs in the back with you and Dani gets into the driver’s seat. The street doesn’t look familiar, and you’ve done plenty of walking. “How far?”

“From your place? About five miles,” Gil says. “Which is impressive, considering you were on foot. Oh, God, I hope you didn’t step in any broken glass. Let’s see them.” Dani starts the car as Gil pulls out a penlight. Reluctantly, you pull my feet out of the blanket. The penlight is too bright, flicking like lightning strikes. Gil turns it off and sits back after a moment with a nod. “Doesn’t look like anything broke the skin, though I’m gonna take a closer look when we get to your place. Now, you don’t have to leave the blanket, but do you think you can get out of those wet clothes?” You shake my head. Too much work, in too small a space. Gil sighs and nods again. “I figured.” You lean against the seat, listening to the tires hum.

In a matter of minutes we’re back at my place. It seems almost unfair, considering that getting to the park feels like it took a year. Gil keeps a hand on my back or my shoulder the whole way up. There are at least twenty more stairs than usual.

The apartment is dark and still, aside from Sunshine’s insistent noise. Gil grumbles and directs you to a chair at the bar while he goes to turn on a light. Dani hovers by the staircase, not sure what to do with her hands. A few lights click on. Gil takes two steps away from the switch and then stops. “Bright, what the hell is that?”

You follow his gaze to the trail of dried blood drops on the floor. “Um. Hm. Dunno.” It leads from the stairs to the bathroom. “Oh. I think I- He just grazed me.”

“Who just what?” Dani asks sharply.

“Uh…” The events themselves are mostly coherent. It’s putting them in the right order that’s hard. “I… got back. From the precinct. I didn’t… I think I was already kind of… drifting… Meds.” You go to stand, but Gil moved closer at some point and pushes you back into the chair. You blink. “Gil, I need to take my meds.”

“Dani, if you would, they’re in that drawer,” Gil says, pointing, without moving or letting you up. “Where did he ‘just graze you’?” His consonants could probably draw blood.

“He barely broke the skin. It’s maybe some butterflies.” You push the blanket off a shoulder and pull my shirt up to show the thin, red line. Gil inhales sharply. “It’s not that bad.” You hear the familiar rattle and look over. “It’s two of the-”

“They say on the side,” Dani says. You don’t like the expression on her face. You don’t know what it is, exactly, but you don’t like it. “Just the recommended dosage?” You aren’t sure if she’s asking you. You look at Gil. You don’t like the face Gil’s making, either. You shiver, huddle into the blanket.

“Yeah,” Gil says. “Yeah, we’ll- start with that. And with this.” Gil places both hands on my shoulders, pressing downward lightly. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

“Okay.” Gil steps around the droplets into the bathroom and comes back out with the first aid kit. “I already cleaned it.”

“In the shower? In your clothes?”

“I… Maybe?”

“Christ.” Gil motions for you to open the blanket again and you do, reluctantly. Gil helps you peel off the shirt and you lean back in the chair to let Gil swab it with something that burns, trying not to move. My skin prickles in the cold. “So. You came back here from the precinct. You were drifting.”

“Yeah. Um. I was… restless. I didn’t- like where my thoughts were.” The resistance, physical and mental, no match for the persistence, physical and mental. “Uh- went to walk? I think? I walk when I can’t sleep. Or eat. I think- tried to mug me. Maybe.” Maybe not that coherent. “He didn’t know what he was doing. Made a feint. Got me through my shirt but I got the knife from him.” Steady as a statue. You swallow through a wave of nausea. “I don’t remember coming back.”

“Next thing you remember is?” Gil’s using butterfly bandages on it. Looking at it again, it seems unnecessary.

“Uh…” The world’s soft edges like a watercolor painting. Following the girl. “It’s pretty… blurry. The park, I guess?” The jolt at hearing that click, those rising tones. “Your phone’s disconnected.”

“My phone’s in the harbor.”

“Yeah. I forgot, though. I kept trying to call you.”

Gil’s hands go still. “I’m sorry, kid.”

“Wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know I…” You look in Dani’s direction. She’s looking at one of the pill bottles. Maybe reading the warnings, maybe not. You can’t tell. “Uh. Dani?”

She shakes herself. “Right. Sorry.” She opens the bottle and shakes out a pill, then closes it with an efficient jerk. Like snapping a neck. Another wave of nausea sweeps over you. She leaves the pills on the counter and opens a cupboard. Half the top shelf is different kinds of crackers, the other half plastic bins of various kinds of hard candy. The lower shelf was organized at some point, but now is just half-full containers of mixed nuts with different flavorings amid bags of licorice.

You can’t see her face. You don’t want to. You close my eyes, focus on the warmth of Gil’s fingers. “Glasses are to the right.”

“Right. Sorry.” Ticking of my soft-closing cabinets. Another cabinet opens, glassware clinks, the cabinet closes. She runs the tap for a minute. You appreciate the gesture. Even though… something you can’t remember. Even though you’re not sure these are going to stay down, either. You swallow hard, breathe deep. You decide they will. They have to. If they don’t, Gil will definitely take you to the hospital.

Hospital. My boy.

Dani sets the half-full glass down next to you, and you remember. “How cold?”

She sets the pills down, too. “As cold as it gets.”

“I can’t.”

She pauses. Blinks. “What?”

“Cold is…” There’s a phrase. You can’t come up with it. “Too much. Hurts.”

“Oh.” After a pause, she picks the glass back up and walks all the way around the island again.

“Sorry.” You want to curl up in a thicker blanket. Climb into the fireplace.

“Almost done,” Gil says, smoothing down another butterfly bandage.

“It’s fine,” Dani says, dumping out the water. The faucet runs. “So like, lukewarm, or…?”

“Slightly cool. It’s, um-” You pull away from Gil to lean over the counter. It’s _freezing_ and you wince, but stick my fingers under the water. “Warmer. Little warmer. Yeah.”

“Sit back down, please.”

You sit, and Gil unwraps another butterfly bandage. You check the progress. Last one, probably. “You know they aren’t going to last the night, right?” With the way they’re pulling against my skin already, they might not last five minutes.

“Then at least I tried,” Gil says, tightly or maybe coldly or something else. Your judgement on these things is clearly not working anymore.

Dani sets down the glass. “Good?”

You dip a finger in. “Good.” You take my meds in order, one at a time. Feel the water make contact with my empty stomach, feel it clench in objection. “Maybe, um. There’s…” You trail off. It can wait.

“What?”

“I can do it.”

A pause. “Can I?” There’s something… softer in the way she says it. Maybe she isn’t angry.

“Uh. The crackers in the blue packaging?” You think it’s blue. She opens the cupboard and points. “Yeah.” She brings them down and sets them in front of you. You pull one out and nibble on it.

“Finished with that,” Gil announces, straightening. “Let me see your feet.”

“They don’t hurt.”

“They’re numb, right? Let me look while they don’t hurt.”

You pull them up carefully, so you’re almost cross-legged on the stool. My phone slides out of your pocket and is caught in the blanket. You’d forgotten it was there. While Gil brings the penlight back out, you look at the texts Ainsley sent. You still don’t remember the conversation she’s talking about. The UPDATE text is something to do with it, too. “You didn’t overhear me talking to Ains, did you?”

Gil looks up briefly. “Only in whispers.”

“Oh.” About Mom, then, or Dad, or me. All three, most likely, and what happened the last time we were together. You try to take a few deep breaths. The iron bands are tightening again.

Gil’s hands are warm on my ankles. “Jesus, Bright, your skin is like ice.”

“Part of withdrawal?”

“Well, your wet clothes aren’t helping.” Rain’s still hissing against the windows. Lightning flickers. If there’s thunder, you don’t hear it. “Bright. Did you hear me?”

The room blurs when you look away from the window, clearing a little with a blink. “Huh?”

“Let’s get you out of your wet clothes, okay?” Gil says, gently. “Dry clothes, dry blanket. Maybe some tea.”

“Okay.” It isn’t until Gil is pulling you off the stool that you fully realize this will involve moving. You lean on Gil while we cross my apartment, which seems to have gotten bigger in your absence. There are wet patches on the floor. We avoid them.

“Yeah, okay,” Gil says over his shoulder, maybe a response to Dani. Maybe she said something. Maybe she’s leaving. “I got this.”

You point to where items are stored when prompted. Words are too hard. You finish the cracker, eventually. Gil helps you out of my wet clothes and remembers the interim step of toweling off before putting on the dry ones. Muscles in my arms and legs are twitching by the time you’re in them. It hurts. Everything hurts. Gil wraps you in a quilt, then smooths my hair back. You’re so tired. You want to sleep.

“We’re good,” Gil says to the room at large.

You don’t think we are, really.

“Tea?”

You lay down, curl up on my side.

Gil says nothing for a moment. “Okay. Um. I’m going to make some peppermint tea, because I want you to eat something before we leave.”

This clears the way for movement, for a lightning flash of panic. “No hospital.”

“No hospital,” Gil repeats, soothing. “That’s not what I meant. I promise I won’t take you. Unless you can’t keep anything down.”

The panic slides away, making my stomach cramp around nothing. Well, around one glass of water and one cracker. You try to sit up three times before a hand on my back helps you up. You look up into a cloud of dark hair and blink. The face resolves into Dani’s. “Hi?”

“Hi.” Her perfunctory smile, there and gone again.

“When did you get here?”

She blinks, glances towards the kitchen, then back at you. “I’ve been here the whole time, Bright.”

“Oh. I thought you left.”

Her lips twist. A genuine smile? Trying not to frown? “Nope. Still here.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

That face again. She nods. Clears her throat. “The, uh, knife on the counter in your bathroom. Is that the one you took from the mugger?”

Wood-handled pocketknife. Ceramic misericorde. My heart slams to a stop inside my chest. “Uh-” My mouth is suddenly dry. Flashes of the alley. Indistinct voices. Pressed into memories, then pulled back out before you can make sense of them. Did you just break the hold on the knife? Did you break the arm holding it? You can’t breathe. You taste asphalt, concrete, rain. Did you grab the wrist and carve up the forearm? One smooth, firm stroke deep enough and he’d bleed out in no time. “Uh- I- Uh-”

“Whoa, hey, breathe-” Her hands hover. “Shit. What do you need?”

“I don’t know.” Don’t throw up. _Don’t_ throw up. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” Feel the flesh give under the knife. Textbook, if they made textbooks about such things. Don’t throw up. “Yeah. Mugger. Was- Is-” _Don’t throw up_. “Lots of blood?”

“Wh- On the knife? No.”

Could’ve been washed off in the rain. Could’ve been washed off in the shower before being left on the counter. “Clothes,” you force out. “Clothes bloody?”

“No, no- Well, the shirt was, a little, but that was from you. Breathe. What-” She stills. “Oh. You’re thinking- Shit. Uh. We can find out, okay? We’ll call around in a few hours.”

“What’s going on?” Gil asks, coming closer.

“He doesn’t remember what happened,” Dani says. She pauses on that. Not enough translation. “Between him and the mugger.”

“What if I killed him?”

They both flinch. From your words or the rasp of my voice? “You didn’t,” Dani says with conviction.

“How do you know?”

“Because I know _you_ , Bright.” She crouches down to look into my face, puts a hand on my knee. You can feel the pressure of it through the blanket. You can’t meet her eyes. “I know it hasn’t been that long but I’ve seen you in… a frankly alarming number of dangerous situations. You wouldn’t. Not even on autopilot. You might dislocate a thumb or something, okay? I could see that. _Maybe_ break a finger. But you’d stop there. You’d do something to make yourself not worth it and once the asshole ran off, that’d be it.”

Gil settles next to you on the bed, stretches an arm across my back. “She’s right, kid.”

You want to cry. Don’t. Already dehydrated. Already exhausted. You lean against Gil, feel him stiffen in surprise before his hand comes to rest at the base of my neck. “I’m _tired_.”

“Tea, and something to eat, first. Do you think you can do that?”

Not what you meant. Still. “Okay.”

The tea takes a while, because first the water has to boil, and then it has to cool, and then the tea has to brew. My brain checks out, listening to Sunshine chirp and twitter. Voices have a low discussion. Someone loses. Gil brings you a glass, a picture you puzzle over for a second before realizing that Gil poured the tea over ice. “Try that.” You do. “Temperature okay?” You nod, sipping slowly. “Good. Now. What do you have besides crackers?”

It’s a rhetorical question. In cases like this, you have to just give whoever free reign in my kitchen. At least Gil has advanced experience in how to handle you. Kid gloves. Was that a pun? You have to hold the glass in both hands and even then you have to focus on not dropping it.

“Yogurt?” You don’t want anything. But you have to eat. So you shrug and nod. “Care what flavor?” Shake my head. “Strawberry and mint is a thing, isn’t it?” Shrug. “Sounds like a thing.” Gil takes the glass and replaces it with the container of yogurt, lid peeled back, contents thoroughly stirred.

You stare at the spoon. Feeding yourself feels like a near-impossible task. “This is bullshit.”

He frowns as he sits next to you. “What is?”

You gesture vaguely. “You’re… babysitting. That’s bullshit.”

Gil says nothing for a moment. “I prefer to think of it as… taking care of someone whose health and wellness are very important to me.”

“Babysitting. An adult.”

“An adult who’s going through an incredibly stressful time,” Gil corrects quietly. “And that’s on top of other extenuating circumstances. We all need accommodating at one time or another.”

Accommodating is letting someone come in an hour earlier or later. It’s changing the date of a meeting so someone can take the original day off. It’s texting before or instead of calling because someone finds phone calls stressful. Double-checking food allergies before catering. Changing the cleaning products to one just as effective but less strongly scented. This is not accommodating.

“At least try to eat, okay?”

You obey mechanically, glad he picked something that doesn’t require chewing. Just swallowing is an effort. My throat hurts. Accommodating. Bullshit. You force another spoonful. A concrete goal: eat half of it. Promising all of it feels like too much. You force deep breaths, too. Forcing yourself to eat is… risky. Somehow you have to convince my body that everything is okay, that I can relax. Good fucking luck.

After a few more spoonfuls, Gil swaps the yogurt for the tea. He rubs a hand across my shoulders, squeezes the base of my neck. “How are you doing?” You shrug. “Doing better, worse?”

You pause. Take stock. Dry, warm, drinking, eating. Exhausted. Even more exhausted at the idea of trying to sleep. Did Dani leave? Maybe she can punch you in the face again. You shrug, shake my head. Look down at the glass. Listen to the ice clink. “I’m so tired. But I’m…” You can feel the tenderness of where you bit my tongue. Another vote for yogurt.

“Scared to sleep?”

You nod. A familiar refrain. You’ve tried it all. Supplements, teas, varying prescriptions and sleep hygiene tips like shuffling a deck of cards. Rigid schedule. No schedule. No difference. Your night terrors tend to strike before REM, so you get slammed into wakefulness no matter what.

“Gonna try anyway?”

“Guessing ‘no’ isn’t an option.”

Gil smiles and stands, takes the glass you didn’t realize just had ice in it. “Not really. C’mon.” He tucks you in, waits for you to put in the mouth guard, then helps you into your restraints. He doesn’t say ‘good night’ or ‘sleep well,’ just takes the remaining yogurt and empty glass into the kitchen and turns off the lights. He settles into the overstuffed chair at the foot of the bed.

He’s never worn handcuffs. I’m restrained to the wall. He steps forward, something flashes in his hand, and searing pain along my side threatens to split me in half.

I wake with a scream muffled by the mouth guard. After a moment of panting, I remember it’s not just phantom pain- someone did actually try to stab me. I drop back against my sweat-damp sheets.

There’s a sleepy noise from the chair. “You good?”

Dani. No, I’m not, but. It’s still dark. There’s time to try again. “Mm-hmm.”

“Mkay. Le’me know if you need something.”

I feel a wave of emotional heat that I struggle to define. Embarrassment would be the most likely candidate but I’d recognize that. I swallow it back and close my eyes.

With a single strike, he paralyzes my throat, deftly plucking the ceramic knife out of my hand as I fall to my knees, gagging for air. “My boy,” he says, fondly, “there’s another way out of this,” and grabs a handful of floral blouse. The knife disappears into it and the air is driven out of her lungs, her eyes going blank even before he pulls the knife out dripping red. She collapses in a heap, skin already cold when I touch her hand.

This time I wake up choking. I release my left wrist. Claw at my neck. Spit out the mouth guard. Roll onto my side. Curl around my lungs in lockdown. Try to remember how to breathe. My chest is on fire. My head spins. Panic tears up my arteries, scorches down my veins. Finally my lungs spasm, letting in about a quarter of the oxygen I need. In the dark room it’s hard to tell if my vision is blacking out or if it just feels like it. I can’t breathe. I need to breathe. I can’t breathe. I _can’t breathe_.

“Hey, it’s okay.” The bed dips behind me and a hand rubs across my shoulders. “It’ll be okay. It’ll pass.”

Another spasm. A rush of cold air into my burning lungs. I grab the hand. It’s solid, steady, warm. After a shift our palms slot together. Another spasm. It wheezes on the way out.

“It’ll pass,” Dani assures me. “It’ll pass. You’ll be okay.”

The bands around my chest gradually loosen enough for the gasps to turn to tearless sobbing. It hurts. Everything hurts. My head is pins and needles, static, harsh white noise. My skin crawls. I release my right wrist and let go of Dani’s hand, then sit up. The room feels distant. Underwater. I grip the bedspread until my knuckles ache. I hear Gil’s voice from the living room. Can’t understand it.

“Night terror,” Dani says. Her hand resumes a slow path across my shoulders.

I taste metal. At least it’s not bile. Objectively I can breathe now but it still feels like an alarm is sounding. My heart is trying to tear itself out of my chest. The air in my apartment is close and stifling, the ceiling is lowering, the windows are leaning inwards. “I need to walk,” I say through numb lips, starting to struggle with the cuffs. Both hands are shaking.

Dani pulls my right wrist toward her and methodically undoes the strap. “Didn’t get enough of that earlier, huh?” She unstraps my left wrist but then doesn’t let go right away. “You need to change into something warmer first, and I’m coming with you.”

“Okay.” I scramble to grab some new clothes and change in the bathroom, coming out to another low discussion. It sounds like Gil is losing again.

“Just around the block,” Dani says firmly, shrugging her coat on and shaking her hair out.

Gil’s hair is mussed and he looks annoyed until he looks at me and then away. “Fine,” he mutters. “Bright, wear a coat and take an umbrella.”

“I don’t have an umbrella,” I lie, pulling on the first coat I grab. I have one somewhere. With every breath the walls are ratcheting closer and I can’t bear to think about taking the time to find it.

“Shoes,” Gil reminds.

“I’ll have my phone,” Dani says, opening the door for me after I yank on my shoes. “We’ll be back soon.”

When we step out onto the sidewalk, it seems an umbrella would be superfluous anyway: it’s more mist than rain now. It’s cool on my overheated skin and I turn my face upward, feel the water land in such fine drops it almost tickles. Not for long, though. My heart is pounding in my throat.

Dani doesn’t try to fill the silence. Just walks next to me, hands in her coat pockets, mist and streetlights making her hair glow. She only speaks up when I pause on a corner. “Let’s not go far, okay? Just circle the block. As many times as you need.”

I feel like an insect pinned to a card. A butterflied corpse bathed in red light. “What if they do charge her?”

She steps closer. Close enough to touch. “She’s got one of the best motives I’ve ever seen. Extenuating circumstances. Plus, y’know.” She shrugs, gesturing vaguely, and I know she’s trying not to say _Your dad’s not exactly an innocent bystander_.

My breath’s catching again. The world’s blurry until I blink the tears out of my eyes. I shake my head. “I don’t- I don’t think I can do this again, Dani. Watch _her_ get lead out of the house in cuffs, see her mugshot on the front page, see them both behind bars-” I’m hyperventilating now. My side aches, not where the bandages are still pulling on my skin, but where I stabbed him with the ceramic knife she smuggled in. “I don’t think-”

“Whoa, hey.” She doesn’t say _it’s okay_ this time, just pulls her hands out of her pockets so she can open her arms. “Shh, c’mere.”

I don’t know who closes the distance. Her coat is cold and wet from following me into the elements, smells like rain and exhaust. I should let go of her, put distance between us. Martin Whitley is a black hole, obliterating everything that gets close to him. I’ve yet to have a relationship I couldn’t ruin. We’re the same.

And yet, it’s the middle of the night and she’s letting me cling to her like a drowning man clings to a life-ring. When she murmurs “You’re gonna get through this, too,” I can almost believe her.


End file.
